Bethalto gets out of leaf pick-up game, changes procedures

Published 2:40 pm, Wednesday, March 14, 2018

BETHALTO — The village has decided that it will no longer be in the leaf pick-up business.

The decision came Monday at the monthly Village Board meeting, where trustees approved an amendment to the garbage ordinance that will require residents to either bag their leaves or place them in a designated, marked receptacle.

Mayor Alan Winslow said that beginning July 1 the village will begin contracting with its current trash hauler, Republic Services, to take care of leaf and brush pick-up in town.

The village will reimburse residents for the cost of that service, which Winslow estimated would run about $20 per quarter.

The pick-ups will take place in October, November and December.

The change means that not only will residents have to rake up their leaves and place them in either a bag or receptacle, they will need to contact Republic ahead of time to sign up for the service.

“We had always allowed people to just rake leaves to the curb. Unfortunately, it resulted in huge blockages of some of our storm sewer pipes,” Winslow said. “So we needed to come up with some sort of solution to keep them out of there.”

The initial idea, he said, was to require residents to bag their leaves rather than simply raking them to the curb, as has been the custom in Bethalto for years. But eventually it became evident that it would be more cost effective to simply pay for the service “as opposed to us running a couple of crews for three or four months out of the year,” he said.

The village currently has a contract with Republic Services for trash and brush.

“It keeps our sewers clean, and it’s actually going to save us a considerable amount of money,” Winslow said. “It’s actually more liberal than a lot of surrounding communities. Some of them only pick up leaves a couple of weeks out of the year.”

Before the village board vote, trustees discussed the situation at a Feb. 12 committee meeting. They considered several options, including limiting the time frame of leaf pick-up, stopping leaf pick-up altogether, and offering edge-of-yard pick-up, with penalties for raking leaves into the streets, gutters or ditches.